“And Mr Verloc, temperamentally identical with his associates… drew them with a certain complacency, because the instinct of conventional respectability was strong within him, being only overcome by his dislike of all kinds of recognized labour — a temperamental defect which he shared with a large proportion of revolutionary reformers of a given social state. For obviously one does not revolt against the advantages and opportunities of that state, but against the price which must be paid for the same in the coin of accepted morality, self-restraint, and coil. The majority of revolutionists are the enemies of discipline and fatigue mostly. There are natures, too, to whose sense of justice the price exacted looms up monstrously enormous, odious, oppressive, worrying, humiliating, extortionate, intolerable. Those are the fanatics. The remaining portion of social rebels is accounted for by vanity, the mother of all noble and vile illusions, the companion of poets, reformers, charlatans, prophets, and incendiaries.”

In this section, Conrad is speaking about Mr. Verloc, the novel’s protagonist who infiltrates and succumbs to the seductive ideology of an anarchist gang operating in London. But the assessment of the terroristic personality could not be more applicable today.

Conrad observes that there are two major characteristics of those who commit acts of terror – lethargy and vanity.

The terrorist is someone whose sense of self-importance weighs so heavily that he craves attention and recognition to the point that he will even die to see his name live on. Laziness enters the equation through the methods he uses to achieve this notoriety. Instead of applying his energy and intelligence – and make no mistake, most modern terrorists are highly educated – to constructive pursuits, the terrorist instead reverts to the atavistic urge to smash things up, to mutilate, inflict pain, and in doing so arouse emotions inversely proportional to his grandiose conceit.

The explosions, the manhunt, the Time Magazine cover: these are his fifteen minutes of fame. The residual fear is his immortality.

Since 9/11, and especially in the recent line-up of self-radicalized terrorists, we see a definite psychological profile emerge. Osama Bin Laden, for all of his ascetic pretensions, routinely doused his hair in Just for Men as he sat alone, watching and re-watching videos of himself giving speeches; and this vanity threads deeper, from the surface into the soul.

Yet the indolence of particularly anomic terrorists must not be minimized either. Indolence in tactics, first. The youngest of the Boston bombers returned to his dorm room and took a nap, then went to a house party, the night after the marathon explosions, but he and his brother failed to hatch even a rudimentary getaway plan or dispose of any incriminating evidence. Richard “The Shoe Bomber” Reid never tried on his sneakers to test his weapon of choice; as a result, when the fuse became soaked with perspiration, it was no longer ignitable. The underwear bomber couldn’t light his Hanes on fire; the Time Square Bomber got locked out of his carbomb.

Crucially, however, there is also the indolence of strategy. Vanity may compel a person to seek immortality, but the terrorist takes the easiest path to get there. Golda Meir was fond of saying that once Arabs began to love their children more than they hated the Jews, there would be peace and security in Israel. But this phrase, in all its glibness, overlooks the possibility that hatred is a much more intoxicating and gripping emotion than love, and this fact alone may lie at the root of much of our world’s ills. And in this same way, destruction is much easier and much quicker than construction. As Chuchill reflected, while surveying the smoldering rubble of East London after a Blitz: “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

Interviewer: I’ve read that you’ve gone as far as to say that the “tyranny of beauty” in our culture has taken a tremendous psychological toll, and it has the tendency to bring out the worst in us. Expound on that.

Bret Easton Ellis: You know I grew up in a family of three women — my mother and my two sisters — all very smart, educated, beautiful, and yet still have problems that they don’t feel they measure up or add up to what the media’s ideal woman is: that they don’t have the hips of a Christy Turlington or a Kate Moss… that if they don’t look a certain way they won’t be accepted. And even though you know that’s wrong, and even though you know most people don’t look like that, those are really the images that flood our culture.

And the images are set up in such a way as to have a maximum impact on you when you look at them — and cause a feeling of desire in you, cause a feeling of wanting to have this stuff, and feeding an insecurity so you will go out and buy that product, buy that dress, buy that makeup.

And that is damaging.

And it’s not only women. I’ve seen in the last ten years men become effected by this too. I mean, the idea that you should have a full head of hair when you’re sixty, or this washboard abdomen when you’re a forty-five, fifty-year-old guy. Or, just that you have to look like a really great looking nineteen-year-old boy for the rest of your life — it’s really ridiculous.

And I don’t think, as humans, we would be thinking about things in this way — or that these would be the ideals which would be of the utmost concern to us — unless it wasn’t for this thing rising up in the culture to hit us in the face.

I admire Ellis as a writer, even though all but two of his novels have been — I can say without a shred of ego or exaggeration — pieces of garbage. Less Than Zero is a punchy and iconic chronicle of adolescent decadence (Ellis wrote it when he was nineteen); and American Psycho is a vivid and unsettling and very good book — or at least about 98% of it is. The subtexts of both of those two books, moreover, orbit around the issues Ellis is discussing here. They’re really all about the superficiality of our culture — superficiality which does not mask banality, but spiritual emptiness and evil.

I would though take issue with the term “tyranny of beauty,” because it is, however evocative, a misnomer. Yeats spoke about “terrible beauty” as a way to call attention to a type of aesthetic allure that was somehow transcendent. Donna Tartt, who in fact went to school with Ellis at Bennington College in Vermont, and dedicated her first novel to her friend and former classmate, observed that, “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming… Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” And this seems to be closer to the truth, even if it is a tad overwrought. There’s nothing uglier than a culture so frenetically obsessed with systematized cosmetic standards that are, even in principle, unobtainable. No, the tyranny under which we suffer isn’t that of beauty; rather, it’s a tyranny of vanity — which can be the ugliest trait of all.

Like this:

It would appear, in keeping up with this blog, that I mean to place (or post) everything on an equal plane. After all, each of these collections of words are published on the same site, in a similar format, with a parallel description, and are then replaced — in the next day or so — by something mirroring that style.

But there is a hierarchy, and among the pantheon of passages that I set down here, there are very few that actually rise to the level of the openings of the Book of Ecclesiastes and, to a lesser extent, Thomas Sterns Eliot’s “The Rock”. As it turns out, T.S. Eliot is essentially echoing the words of Ecclesiastes. Yet that fact does, nicely enough, only serve to bolster the messages of each, which seem to crystallize several descriptors of human life: brevity, transience, vanity.

(It’s worth recalling that King Solomon, the wealthiest and wisest man in Jerusalem, is the speaker in Ecclesiastes.)

Ecclesiastes 1-2:17

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher;
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

3 What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?4 One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.6 The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.7 All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.8 All things are full of labor;
Man cannot express it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.10 Is there anything of which it may be said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.11 There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.

12 I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. 14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,
And what is lacking cannot be numbered.

16 I communed with my heart, saying, “Look, I have attained greatness, and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind.

18 For in much wisdom is much grief,
And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure”; but surely, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter—“Madness!”; and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” 3 I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

4 I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. 5 I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6 I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. 7 I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds.

9 So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.

10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.
I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure,
For my heart rejoiced in all my labor;
And this was my reward from all my labor.11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done
And on the labor in which I had toiled;
And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.There was no profit under the sun.

12 Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly;
For what can the man do who succeeds the king?—Only what he has already done.13 Then I saw that wisdom excels folly
As light excels darkness.14 The wise man’s eyes are in his head,
But the fool walks in darkness.
Yet I myself perceived
That the same event happens to them all.

15 So I said in my heart,
“As it happens to the fool,
It also happens to me,
And why was I then more wise?”
Then I said in my heart,
“This also is vanity.”16 For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever,
Since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come.
And how does a wise man die?
As the fool!

17 Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind.

The opening of Eliot’s “The Rock”

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

For better or for worse, I map my Dad’s psyche and personal history onto that of Solomon in Ecclesiastes. It’s a long and somewhat convoluted story to explain why my mind would approach my father’s personal history in this way, but much of it probably has to do with his improbable achievements (as well as the sheer range of experiences and endeavors which have made up the fabric of his life). Most sons admire their fathers, sure, but I can promise you my dad is different.

As always, Ecclesiastes is posted in the real crème de la crème of Bibilical translations, The New King James. Go donate your Living Bible to charity and throw away your copy of The Message; God doesn’t speak in the same jargon as the Kardashians.

The first photo was taken several days ago at my ranch; the other photos were taken in Ireland, several years ago.